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Crafts need to be levelled out.

After doing beta one and two I was already grandmaster in Apothecary and Foraging. That's far to easy if you can get it done in about a week. But im finding runecrafting to be very hard to level up as I don't have outfitter or armorsmithing with butchering to runebreak items I make, I'm still at level 317. This I think is how it should be but im still making runes that are green and yellow and not levelling up 1 point making about 8 runes. In the past you always had a orange rune to make that guaranteed you would go up 1 level but it's not the case now. Also having so few gear-lesser drops to break makes it even harder for someone with my crafts.

So where is the balance? Some crafts need to be harder and some easier because there is no joy in achieving grandmaster in one week and there is no joy in making 8 runes a day and not going up one level.

Yes. The new progression for crafting is that most recipes will only remain Orange for 5 skill points, Yellow for 5 skill points and then Green for 10 skill points; with most recipes being spread by 10 points.

So, you won't always have an Orange recipe to get skill ups, but you should always have a Yellow recipe with a very high chance to award skill ups.

Additionally, you should be able to get from 300-375 on Uncommon quality recipes from just the trainer alone (generally with at least 2 recipes). Additional recipes from the Artisan Store, Faction merchants, Dungeon drops and from the Daily Quest reward bag will only supplement your leveling.

This should provide a slow but steady progression for most crafters; allowing them to level up with a minimal amount of frustration while making the crafting leveling experience feel a little more involved and rewarding.

This was in reply to my post asking about the lack of available orange recipes at 305 weaponsmith.

After spending what I consider a fair amount effort into leveling every crafting profession into the 300+ territory (via my copied 4 set of 50's), I wholeheartedly agree with the OP. I was flabbergasted how easy it was to take Apoth to 375 and frustrated to an equal degree how much of a non starter Runecrafting is.

When most crafting progress feels closer to Runecrafting than Apoth, it feels like there's a less than optimal pattern in place. The feedback of a string of recipe casts that don't result in a skill up is just not enjoyable game play. This is often exacerbated by the fact that the average material cost and diversity has increased, sometimes significantly.

I have a lot of respect for Rift's innovative mechanics and innovative recombination of mechanics. However, I'm not seeing that in Storm Legion crafting. Based on my personal experience, the crafting game play has degraded overall.

I feel that I understand the rationale behind moving away from a cheap & repetitive model (which I'll admit was fun for me). However, I believe going to a model where the recipes are more expensive and less likely to produce progress isn't any kind of innovation and in fact seems likely to produce negative experiences similar to my own.

As much as I don't want to draw the comparison, I have to bring up the pattern implemented in WoW with the Cataclysm expansion. More costly recipes were balanced with 3 or 5 point profession increases. While not increasing the overall material consumption in the economy, this still provided the feeling of significance to which I think Taleen was alluding.

While I'm by no means stating that this should be lifted from WoW (cuz really, you guys have proven that you're better than that), I'd really REALLY appreciate effort put into making the craft system more engaging or at least put back on the previous path rather than where it seems to have veered off and into the underbrush.

Just to put it out there, I'd be very happy to contribute to such an effort in any form.

<TL : DR> a five point stretch of orange-less weaponsmithing is VERY different from the same in apothecary

This was in reply to my post asking about the lack of available orange recipes at 305 weaponsmith.

After spending what I consider a fair amount effort into leveling every crafting profession into the 300+ territory (via my copied 4 set of 50's), I wholeheartedly agree with the OP. I was flabbergasted how easy it was to take Apoth to 375 and frustrated to an equal degree how much of a non starter Runecrafting is.

When most crafting progress feels closer to Runecrafting than Apoth, it feels like there's a less than optimal pattern in place. The feedback of a string of recipe casts that don't result in a skill up is just not enjoyable game play. This is often exacerbated by the fact that the average material cost and diversity has increased, sometimes significantly.

I have a lot of respect for Rift's innovative mechanics and innovative recombination of mechanics. However, I'm not seeing that in Storm Legion crafting. Based on my personal experience, the crafting game play has degraded overall.

I feel that I understand the rationale behind moving away from a cheap & repetitive model (which I'll admit was fun for me). However, I believe going to a model where the recipes are more expensive and less likely to produce progress isn't any kind of innovation and in fact seems likely to produce negative experiences similar to my own.

As much as I don't want to draw the comparison, I have to bring up the pattern implemented in WoW with the Cataclysm expansion. More costly recipes were balanced with 3 or 5 point profession increases. While not increasing the overall material consumption in the economy, this still provided the feeling of significance to which I think Taleen was alluding.

While I'm by no means stating that this should be lifted from WoW (cuz really, you guys have proven that you're better than that), I'd really REALLY appreciate effort put into making the craft system more engaging or at least put back on the previous path rather than where it seems to have veered off and into the underbrush.

Just to put it out there, I'd be very happy to contribute to such an effort in any form.

<TL : DR> a five point stretch of orange-less weaponsmithing is VERY different from the same in apothecary

I would like a whole new revamp of the crafting system. But that will be for future patches i presume.

With only 75 points to master out the crafting for SL, it's my fond hope that it IS tough, and takes longer than a week to accomplish.

I think this is a good goal. What I don't think is good is the increased likelihood of losing time invested* due to random chance. It's an undesirable aspect to raid encounters so why is it acceptable here?

I have to agree. With the steeper drop-off in skill point gains in Armorsmithing, I'm finding it much more time-consuming and difficult to level.

I've participated in all 3 betas now. Within 4 hours of beta 1, I was Grandmaster in mining. And still only had gathered enough materials to get me to about 315 in Armorsmithing (that's over 150 ores, plus leather and cloth). Within that same time frame I was in the 360s in Butchering.

Butchering took longer because I had to level up to find mobs that would give me skill points (but oddly still drop the same types of hides).

But I am now Grandmaster in Mining and Butchering and at around 360 in Armorsmithing. I found that in the case of Armorsmithing, the curve flattened a bit above about 340 and skill points came more steadily (of course, the RNG could have just been in my favor).

Since we now have these quicker drops in recipe difficulty, one suggestion to smooth out the curve would be to make the purchased recipes offset by 5 points (so instead of requiring 340, it would require 345) thus allowing you a more stable way to get skill points.

This could speed up progression to max, but I don't believe it will by much since the material costs for purchased recipes are generally higher as they produce higher quality items. This would give us a choice to either spend more low-level mats for a chance to skill or spend more high-level mats for a guaranteed chance to skill.

After going through the feedback, we've decided to change the leveling system so that you will, once again, always have an orange recipe to skill up with.

With requiring you to skill up via yellow recipes, I created a situation in which the crafting leveling experience could vary wildly from player to player based on RNG. If you got favorable rolls, you could end up crafting only 10 items for 10 skill ups. If you got unfavorable rolls, you could end up crafting 25 or more items for those same skill ups. We'd prefer that everyone, for all crafts, have a similar experience rather than some players lucking out and other players feeling frustrated by randomness.

This should also help balance out the overall leveling experience between crafting professions. Although, as I've stated before, there will be differences between the "items" professions of Artificer, Armorsmith, Outfitter, and Weaponsmith and the "consumables" professions of Survivalist, Apothecary, and Runecrafter due to the differences in how these professions are balanced (one group being item slots and the other being stats).